The Last Novel - By David Markson Page 0,6

made notes about everything — and would turn aside in the middle of a conversation to scribble down something he himself had just said that he realized he might possibly later be able to use.

O Lord, who art hidden in the clouds and behind the cobbler’s house —

Commenced a prayer voiced by Marc Chagall as a boy in Vitebsk.

The nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.

Said Louis Aragon.

Novelist’s isolation — ever increasing as the years pass also.

Days on which he is aware of speaking to no one at all, for example, except perhaps a checkout clerk, or his letter carrier, or some basically anonymous fellow tenant in the elevator.

Matt Arnold, he was commonly called.

Jack Galsworthy.

The grete poete of Ytaille.

Chaucer referred to Dante as — in the late fourteenth century.

Though there would be no English translation of the Divine Comedy until 1785.

Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.

Insisted Byron.

Was he Christian, Jewish, or atheist? Samuel Beckett was once asked in a Dublin courtroom. To which:

None of the three.

The extant application for a reader’s ticket at the British Museum signed by Arthur Rimbaud on March 25, 1873, attesting that he has read the regulations for the Reading Room and that he is not under twenty-one years of age — when in truth he was still only eighteen.

Catullus, informing friends that he is broke:

With nothing but cobwebs in my wallet.

The Shakespeare of the lunatic asylum.

An early French critic called Dostoievsky.

Foul. Like a rat, slithering along in hate. He is not nice.

Being D. H. Lawrence’s later view.

The concept of life after death should be empathically promulgated by the state, Plato said.

If only so that soldiers would be willing to die in battle.

George Washington left no children of his own.

A great-granddaughter of Martha’s, by way of her earlier marriage, married Robert E. Lee.

The most repulsive thing I ever saw or heard in my life.

Said Clara Schumann of Tristan und Isolde.

Plutarch, who relinquished fame and power in Rome to live quietly and do his writing in Chaeronea, near Delphi.

A small town that would have been even smaller if I left.

Brave translunary things.

Michael Drayton saw in Marlowe.

Intemperate & of a cruel hart.

Thomas Kyd noted of him instead.

For half a dozen years, in his middle and late fifties, Oskar Kokoschka was forced to turn out little other than watercolors — because he generally could not spare the few dollars for oils and canvas.

Cry, art, cry, and loudly lament.

No one, any longer, desires you.

Woe is me.

— Lettered Lucas Moser, a minor German painter, onto an altarpiece in 1431.

Fortune favors the brave, says Virgil.

Presumably aware that Terence had said it earlier.

Brunelleschi once carved a wood crucifix by which Donatello was so impressed that he could only gape in astonishment — while also spilling the apron full of eggs he had been bringing to Brunelleschi’s studio for their lunch.

Tennyson was once so drunk at the end of a London dinner that he started to leave by way of the fireplace.

I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground — because I am afraid.

El Greco. Vermeer. Dieric Bouts. Frans Hals.

Each of whom was essentially forgotten for at least two centuries.

Or longer.

Bombastic nonsense. Concepts bordering on madness.

Humbug.

Schopenhauer found in Hegel.

The anecdote, passed on as genuine, about Beaumont and Fletcher once being angrily accused of high treason by strangers in a tavern who had become convinced they were plotting to kill the king — when in actuality they had been discussing the outline of a new play.

He had often regretted opening his mouth, said Simonides.

But he could not recall having ever caused any major catastrophe by keeping it shut.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.

Said Cyril Connolly.

England expects that every man will do his duty.

Every man, on Nelson’s flagship the Victory, incidentally including boys of ten and twelve, some having been caught up by press gangs.

During most of his adult life, Joshua Reynolds made use of an ear trumpet.

And in his final years became almost totally blind.

Beethoven’s unkempt, laundry-strewn Vienna flat.

While beneath the piano, recollected at least one visitor, his chamber pot — unemptied.

John Locke died while sitting in a drawing room listening to someone read from the Psalms.

Novalis died while listening to a relative play the piano.

The wintry conscience of a generation.

V. S. Pritchett called George Orwell.

A poem by Theocritus written in Alexandria ca. 270 BC — Complaining that the streets were too crowded.

Antonin Artaud spent nine of his last eleven years in insane